Weekly Report, August 26-30

Week Two.

Short Version:

Unfortunately, there is still work outstanding which is why I'm late posting this.

Copywork: a, o, c, d

Dictation:
Older--two longish passages
Younger--everyday with FLL.

Recitation: Memorized The Flies and the Honey Pot.

Latin: finished up Lesson 6 and began Lesson 7 in Lively Latin.

Spelling: List K6 in SWR, plurals page.

History: SoTW2 ch. 25 and 26

Writing: Aesop A: not done (and I've decided it won't be on those weeks we double up on SoTW.)

Math
The Younger--SM 2B, Ex. 24- 29
The Older SM 3B Review 1,2, and well, he didn't finish.

Grammar
The Younger--FLL 159-163
The Older--R&S4, 5, 6 and 1/2 of 7. Again he's not finished.

Science:
First half of Ch. 10, Apologia's Flying Creatures of the Fifth Day.

Long Version:

Tuesday.

Up at 6:30am this morning. This time it did not go well! I let them watch Arthur for a bit and what with one thing and another we didn't actually sit down to start until 8:30. Then the Older had to take a bathroom break. He takes looong bathroom breaks.

Spelling (SWR); I started with it. It took 50 minutes to dictate K6. It was torture--for all of us. In six or seven weeks, we start over again at list J. I can't wait!

Latin: Review of Junius Brutus. It wasn't as bad as I'd thought it might be. Note to self: do not take a month long break in the middle of a two part history lesson.

Aesop A: We read The Top and the Ball by Hans Christian Anderson. I took the part of "narrator", The Older was the top and the younger read the part of the ball. When I first read this story this weekend, I nearly cried. The kids had the same reaction. The younger actually said, "I die?" We had a nice discussion of whether the top "really" had loved the ball or not.

I dictated a complicated section to the Older and had the Younger copy it out.

Break.

Oh Happy Day. We did Chapter 25(a) The Plague. And we did the colouring page. And the map. And our narrations--all in about an hour! The younger dictated hers to me and I dictated the first two sentences back. (Boy, has FLL made this process quicker and smoother than it has been with the Older!) The Older wrote his out. Here's what he wrote (after correcting for spelling and punctuation. I don't correct everything all the time, so his idiosyncratic use of caps is retained!)

In the Middle ages people suffered from the Black death (the Plague). People were dying Left and Right and through the window. Animals and humans died from it. Even the sick cloths made everyone get sick. No one could stop the Plague, some said "it's the End of the world!" If you felt a headache or had lumps in your armpits, and a lot of pain, you had the Black death. P.S. It does not exist anymore.

My eight month old nephew arrived and stayed several hours. I can see why Moms with little ones love reading aloud so much! All three sat on the couch (with the dog!) and listened to me read a chapter of The Railway Children. I was surprised, but it calmed the little one (as long as we played his little music toy very softly from time to time. Fortunately it didn't bother me a bit.) My kids were so good with him! My daughter, the Younger, decided she would feed him. So he sat on my son's lap and it went like this:
Daughter: spoon feed baby.
Son: Wipe baby's face
Daughter: pass the baby his sippy cup.
Son: help the baby hold his sippy cup.
Daughter: spoon feed baby.
Son: Wipe baby's face
Daughter: pass the baby his sippy cup.
Son: help the baby hold his sippy cup.
lather...rinse...repeat.

It was funny until he started to fuss--and that was no surprise! But they were so good with him that when my sister arrived to pick him up, I gave them about 45 minutes "off" until we started school again.

Grammar:
Younger: FLL Lesson 159. Prepositions. When she came into the room and saw the table "set" she asked, puzzled, "I thought we were doing grammar."
Older: R&S3, Lesson 5. I had thought we'd do 5 lessons a week--but really, it's enough to do four. Why stress? It's much more thorough and the lessons are longer than R&S 3. But it's still good. It seems to be much more at his level than R&S 3 which felt like going through the motions, even though the material was all new to him.

Math:
Younger: breezed through two money exercises in 2B. She got all but two of the "American coin" questions right. I was surprised! I also gave her a Canadian Coin supplement--but she's been counting change since last year!
Older: Excused from Math today.

Evaluation: Didn't do Bible, or penmanship and neither did their first draft of The Top and Ball. But that's OK. We had Read-Aloud and Baby Feeding 101 instead!

Wednesday.

Up at 6:30.
45 minutes of assigned reading.

Bible--
Proverbs, 2: 6-end. Still dealing with procedural issues. Talked a bit about integrity. Hope they "got" it.

Spelling--
Taught how to make words plural. It was excruciating. I wonder how much they will remember?

Break.

Latin.
The Government of Rome.

Break.

SoTW2: 25 (b) How Europe Changed.
It's tough to do Review questions, narrations, and the chapter test all in one day! And then I gave them a craft on top of it: the Bubonic plague wheel. It was the carrot, you see.

Grammar--Younger did FLL 161--making up sentences with prepositions and nouns. She loves dictation but had a melt down when she realised that she was to write four lines of "Bed in Summer" by R.L. Stevenson. So, I let her write the first two.

Older--writing assignment. I didn't leave clear enough instructions about how to do it, but he did write something! So, that's all right.

Math--
Younger: played with the Rainbow Rock CD for quite a while and then did exercises (2B): 26 & 27
Older: Did yesterday's and today's work, 3B Reviews 1 and 2

Evaluation: It was a horrid day. I was upset and impatient through most of it. We actually made up a new song. (To the tune of the first line: "A sailor went to sea, sea, sea"):

You drive Mommy up the wall (repeat)
You drive Mommy up the wall. (shout).

The kids were singing it again at bed-time (but thankfully without the shouting).

Yikes.

Thursday

Up at 6:30. They read for a while (my daughter wanted me to read Railway Children. I hadn't had my coffee, yet.) and also watched an episode on DVD while playing Skip-Bo. So, I figured their brains were awake enough to start with
Latin. Finished Lesson 6 with a Vocabulary Exercise. Hooray.

Spelling:
This was interesting. I wanted them to do two things: 1) Use alliteration to write sentences from their words and 2) Pluralise at least one list word per sentence. They managed the second (but not the first). It was an excellent review of yesterday's lesson.

Copywork/Dictation.
I set myself up with a trial version of Startwrite (I used to have the full version and it's been a process getting it restored to the computer!) and ran off a sheet of "d's" each which they did.

Then I had my daughter copy while I dictated the following to my son:
"Many died daily or nightly in the public streets: many others died at home" Giovanni Boccaccio

Then we took a break.

As it was too hard to read our poems three times through a grilled cheese sandwich, we moved on to listening to Chapter 26(a) The Battle at Agincourt. Narrations took a long time. Again, the older wrote his directly from doing the review questions orally, and I dictated the first four sentences (two at a time) to the Younger.
Then they had an eraser fight.

Math--
Younger. It was funny. During our first break I corrected her math from yesterday. She had only one mistake, so I took it to her, saying, "Look, you did really well. Only one mistake." and she asked me, "Can I do it now?" So, she did Ex. 27 on her break! She did Ex. 28 after Grammar.

Older--oops. I haven't marked his work for a while and there were a number of errors. I'm a little concerned. We worked on a few corrections, but it is mostly my fault. When did SM start introducing equations with two different kinds of operations? And in the word problems no less?!

Grammar:
Younger--FLL 161. "Before, behind, below, beneath." We actually made up a little dance! That was so much fun.

Older--We went through the lesson part, but didn't do the written work. A friend he hasn't seen for a long time invited him over to play. School starts next week for him, so they haven't much opportunity to play.

However, I think the fact that we've jumped into this is beginning to cause some problems. I had to get out some pencil crayons and mark up a sentence in different colours for identifying the complete predicate, the simple predicate, the verb phrase, main verb, helping verb. ALL so we could then find the simple subject!

Friday
Up at 6:30. Really, really feeling it. So tired, my back felt glued to the bed. When the kids popped in a movie, I didn't say a word but let them watch it until it was done at 8:45.

Spelling test of List K6. The Older got 100%, the Younger missed three. Not bad, but not great either.

Latin: Started Lesson 7. It has been much, much too long since we covered subject/verb agreement and how to find the right declension for the noun. I should probably type up a little handout. If I don't forget. Or fall asleep.

Bible: Proverbs 3: 1-4. Had a great discussion of what it means to be loyal (and kind).

Poetry: They just about have The Flies and The Honey Pot memorized. Time for another one!

History: SoTW2 26 (b) Joan of Arc. Mapwork, colouring page, Timeline, chapter test.

Grammar:
The Younger--FLL 161.
The Older--

Math:
The Younger--Ex. 29 and she made brownies.
The Older--

Saturday
Science:
We did Metamorphosis. It took 1 1/2 hours. I don't want to talk about it.

Independent Reading:
Younger: 2 1/2 days (or 1 hour and 15 minutes) behind.
Older: 3 days (or 3 hours) behind.